by Ryan Schow
“You sure she’s dead? I mean, you’re being honest with me? She’s—”
I nod my head again, slowly, solemn.
“How?”
“She was bullied before she died, and the abuse was so lasting and so violently unjust that she stabbed herself in the neck with a pair of scissors.”
He seems to relax, like maybe I’m telling the truth. He so desperately wants this to be the truth. He wants to let himself believe in poetic justice.
“Good,” he says, surprising himself.
When he says this, his emotional demeanor isn’t up to par with that of an upstanding life-saving medical professional. His aren’t the eyes of a mental health administrator. His are the eyes of a grieving father who lost his daughter to a cyber bully, the eyes of a husband who lost his wife to her disgust for what he was doing to their daughter.
3
The problem with Tad Blalock is he can’t keep his hands to himself. Even now. I know this because I snuck inside that head of his when I was gathering memories to stuff into the once breathing Cameron O’Dell. I was looking for a loving father who lost his daughter and found a monster instead. For now, I choose to sideline this disgusting truth, even though it has my stomach cramping with an indescribable loathing.
“Cameron was in a great amount of pain as she was forced to contemplate the abuse others suffered at her insistence. Myself included.”
“She bullied you?”
“Constantly. It made me think of your daughter.”
His eyes begin to water, the shine genuine, reflective. I can almost see myself in the mirror of his damp, sad eyes. But I can’t. Still I wonder, what would I look like to him?
Really, I want to know.
slipping inside his head, I see me looking at him and I feel him. He’s a beast in sheep’s clothing. A bottomless disease. And the duffel bag between us? It still sits in the good doctor’s brain as something undiscovered, as a reason for concern.
“Who bullied her into…doing this to herself?” he asks, dabbing his eyes. “Not that such details matter in the grand scheme of events, as cruel as that may sound.”
“The person who did this to her matters a great deal, Dr. Blalock.” I leave it at that. What I do is just let that statement hang on the edge of forever.
“Well thank you for telling me this,” he finally says. “It gives me a small measure of closure, though I’ll never admit that because all life has value, Ms. O’Dell’s included. And I’m sure there will be people who will miss her the same way there are people who miss my Patricia.”
He starts to stand, ready to see me out. His eyes won’t stop seeing the duffle bag though, and they won’t stop seeing my youthful frame, these supple lips, my standing-at-attention breasts.
The word perky keeps rolling around in his mind, all silky soft, just nudging him with the most anxious of warmth, the most tenuous of needs.
“You and me,” I say, my darkening tone denoting a change of topic, “we’re not done. So sit down.”
This is the sour human filth who violated his daughter night after night, the same predator who now looks upon his patients the same way he looked upon Patricia: with a rapacious gaze.
During the day, while his patients are in between their meds, Dr. Blalock is so generous and professional. When the sun sets though, this is the creature whose eyes flame with an uncomfortable frenzy of want and desire and unrestrained lust. This is the same vile thing who doses a few chosen patients with Flunitrazepam, or as it’s more commonly known, Rohypnol.
The date rape drug.
Prescribed to the young girls quietly suffering from insomnia or its effects, due to a history of the misuse of cocaine or methamphetamines, these girls have no problem sleeping. At night, while he’s working late, Dr. Blalock visits these girls. The sheep’s skin falls off and the wolf sets himself upon them.
These girls are no longer patients; they’re no longer people. These girls with unfortunate lives, they become something different. They become unwilling, unconscious receptacles to Blalock’s foulest perversions, his unbidden lust for youth and all the innocence they have yet to lose.
Oh how he loves to take, take, take.
He dreams of being the one to steal everything sacred and virtuous from them. Cameron O’Dell is a saint compared to this hideous creature. While in his head, while I was steeped in the aberrant shamelessness of his desires, of his compulsions, I brushed shoulders with the helplessness he feels against his corruptions.
The yin and yang of sickness.
His addiction owns him. Holds him hostage. Without a family to keep his self-proclaimed “dark rider” at bay—without Patricia—the impulses have swarmed him. His life is merely a means to an end now. Children are his fix.
He needs them.
Swallowing past that huge Adam’s apple of his, knowing how dry his mouth is becoming, and how rapid his heart rate is accelerating, he blinks three quick times and says, “What do you mean, me and you?”
“What I mean is mostly you. Sit down, Tad. Now.”
He sits.
Smiling wide, trying to look more like my own version of the sheep rather than the monster, I say, “Would you be so kind as to take out a pen and a blank sheet of paper.”
He stares at me long and hard. I don’t budge. Then he blows out a unamused breath, shakes his head and obliges me.
“That’s for you,” I tell him. “Just hold on to it for later.”
“Ms. Swann, my time is valuable.”
“Indeed it is. Going back to Cameron, I told you she was bullied. What I meant to say was she was tortured. Specifically she had every last bit of her hair pulled out over the span of about five minutes, most of it coming out in bloody chunks. Then she had two unsightly X’s burned over her nipples and the word ‘Bully’ carved into her abdomen as a reminder of what she was. Of what she had become.”
He swallows hard. “You never said who did this to her.”
“You’re right, I didn’t.”
He glances down at the phone, trying to be sly, and all he can think about right now is calling Nathaniel in security. The guard I met earlier.
“Nathaniel won’t help you,” I say, rejoicing in his fierce wonderment. “Besides, this is a private matter.” Snapping my finger, I say, “Stay with me, Doctor.”
“How did you—”
“In the end, Cameron knew what she did. There was no escape. I mean, she got it. She really, truly understood. This was right before she killed herself.”
“You need to leave.”
“Do me a favor, Doc, and just shut your stinkhole for a hot second and listen.”
“Fine, young lady,” he relents, but without an ounce of joy. “You have two minutes and then I’m going to have you physically thrown from this institution.”
I sit here, grinning, unnerved, undeterred by his threat.
“What her tormentor did—and this is going to sound a little out there, so bear with me—what her tormentor did was borrow the emotions of those who knew and loved her victims most. From the survivors’ unguarded minds, Cameron’s abuser borrowed all their pain, their failed hopes and dreams, all the disappointment and loss stored in their broken hearts. She borrowed these feelings and emotions and then she shoved them inside of Cameron’s heart. This sort of tortured penance…Cameron earned it through her misdeeds. She was made to feel what they felt. What you felt. Do you understand, Doctor?”
He starts to stir, his ugly eyes rolling like this is a tasteless joke, like he doesn’t believe me. That story-telling hook I anchored in his mouth, he wiggles it out, breaks free of it. The way he figures, sometime in the next few minutes, no matter what I say, he’s calling Nathaniel.
“I know, it’s difficult to believe, especially for a man of your stature and limited belief system. But before you make that call, just hear me out. I promise, there’s a happy ending.”
His face burns a bright red. He’s lost his patience.
“If you think I’
m going to believe a bullshit story like that, a story that is clearly impossible, then perhaps your being here is fortuitous. Have you been treated in an institution like this before, Ms. Swann?”
I glance down at the duffle bag between us. His gaze follows mine and this seems to center him. It seems to tell him I’m not here for his Roofies and his nighttime violations.
“That’s how I discovered you, Tad. How I knew all the things you were doing to her. How it wasn’t just Cameron who played a role in her death. I was inside your head, looking at you, bearing witness to the fullness of your depravity, you sick motherfucker.”
“You were Cameron’s bully,” he said, like he was getting it.
“You’re gosh damn right I was.”
4
I admit to bullying Cameron to death and then I just let the truth sit there between us, sinking in. He starts to cower, to fidget, and all this time I’m looking at him with steady, unforgiving eyes thinking, that’s right, the spotlight’s on you bitch.
Shifting in his chair, he loosens his tie, gives a subtle pull at the collar of his shirt and cracks his neck sideways.
“What you did to her,” he says, “it’s every bit as unforgiveable as what she did to you.”
“In many ways it’s worse.”
I reach forward, unzip the duffle bag so only I can see inside, then dig my hand past all the hardware and pull out the first weapon. A bottle of pills.
My perfectly steady hand sets the pill bottle on the desk between us.
My eyes drill into his.
“I’m all about opportunities, Tad. This is yours. What I want you to do is write down the names of your victims. All of them. Start first with your neglected wife, then with your molested daughter. And from there everyone else. This will be your official statement. Your formal confession.”
He looks at the full bottle of aspirin, then back at me.
“My formal confession?” he barks, his cheeks shaking. Then: “I’m all done with this preposterous game!”
“You’re done when I tell you you’re done,” I explain, calmly.
“I’m calling Security.”
He reaches for the phone, but I swat his hand away and say, “No, you’re not.”
Startled, the anger simmering, his ugly eyes blistering, he says, “Oh, but I am.”
Ignoring him, I say, “I’ve had a lot of time to think this through. At first, I thought I’d peel your skin clean off your body, but then I thought about hammering your nuts flat with a hammer. As thrilling as that sounds, I went a step further. I thought of filming your confession while I torture you—which is what I did to Cameron—but none of these methods really peaked my interest.”
At this point, he’s thinking it might be wise to take me serious.
It really, really would.
“However much I want you to suffer for your crimes, for me, there’s no point where I will be satisfied, and in the end, I couldn’t live with myself. So I’m going to give you a chance I haven’t given anyone else. That’s what the aspirin is for.”
“I’m more of an Ibuprofen man myself,” he says, still fuming.
“Write the names of all the girls you victimized along with a description of your sexual activities with each of them. I’m talking times, incidents, frequency of abuse. Then this bottle of pills…you can make this your happy ending.”
“You’re insane.”
“Okay,” I say, calmly.
I take the pills, put them in the bag, remove a razor blade. “Confess your crimes, Tad. Do it now and this will be your end,” I say, motioning to the naked razor blade.
He looks at the blade and says, “I’m a man of health. I help people.”
I take away the razor, bring out a small pistol. Set it on the table between us. He goes for it, aims it at my head and smiles, like he’s got one on me. My mind overtakes his and the gun in his hand starts to shake and turn. It turns all the way around until the barrel is facing that sweet spot between his squirming eyes.
Unblinking, expressionless, I hold his panicked gaze.
“If I wanted to, I could make you pull the trigger,” I say, watching his forehead grow slick with nervous sweat. “But I won’t. How you die is not for me to decide. Before you die though, you will confess.”
I return the gun to the table and his hand to his side. By now, his shirt is growing dark with perspiration at the armpits. I take the first pistol off the table, bring out something larger: a Colt .45.
“Let’s start with the names of your victims.”
He starts thinking them and at the same rate as he’s thinking them, my mouth is saying them out loud. He’s startled at the speed by which I’m saying the names of the girls he abused; he’s scared and he’s starting to believe.
I motion to the pencil and paper.
“Write down those names that just entered your head. You and I know they aren’t all the girls, but this is a start. By the end of our time together, each and every infraction will be documented in perfect detail for the authorities. For the grieving families.”
Tad Blalock’s sweat is really pouring now. It has a sour, odious quality to it I find so offensive I swear to Christ I want to end him right now just to coat that nastiness with the coppery stench of blood. He said every life has value, but his doesn’t. Not to me.
His death is the real bargain here. That I haven’t killed him already, I’m wondering if this is just the snake coiling around the mouse.
“Admitting what you’ve done is how you’ll bring closure to the families you’ve hurt, how you will validate the victims who have tried to come out against you, these same victims you harassed and then settled with out of court as a result of their bravery in coming forward.”
He looks at the big gun, then at the pen and paper, and then at me. He shakes his head no. Like he’s almost there, but he can’t quite do it, not just yet.
“I…I…this is a thriving practice, Ms. Swann. I help children.”
He’s starting to cry now. He paws at each treacherous tear. Refusing to let them make it past his eyelids unwiped.
Grabbing the Colt .45, I stuff it back in the bag. Out comes a sawed off shotgun with a worn pistol grip stock and scratched off serial numbers.
“After this weapon, there are three more, two in the bag and then one final choice. The two weapons in the bag, they’re not guns. Spoiler alert you self-righteous toilet bug, after the shotgun comes the grenade, and after that…the chainsaw.”
“You expect me to kill myself with a chainsaw?”
“It has creative value, wouldn’t you say?” He doesn’t answer with anything other than a sharp, crazed whimper. “When you hear the last alternative, trust me, you’ll want the chainsaw.”
“And that is?”
I start to take the shotgun away, but he grabs the barrel and says, “I’m not saying no, I’m just asking.”
Because I’ve already crawled his brain and seen the bedlam harvesting inside him, I say, “If you bypass the options of the hand grenade and the chainsaw, then I will take the memories and the experiences of the thirty-three girls you’ve molested and raped, and I will shove them into your brain so you can suffer the way they suffered.”
“You think your black magic will work on me?”
Ignoring him, I say, “When I do this, your brain will be a wash of horror the likes of which not even someone with your understanding of mental health can imagine. Every single day. It will be the insanity you cannot tear yourself away from. Meds won’t work. Electroshock therapy, maybe, but only if you fry every last circuit in that damaged mind of yours.”
He’s looking at the shotgun, wondering if I really have the power to do what I’m saying I can do. He’s thinking of how I took the gun in his hand and with my mind aimed it at his head, then took it away. The way I controlled his body, it’s making him a believer.
“Doubt will be your downfall, Tad.”
He doesn’t know what to say.
“The frosting on t
he cake here, the real gem in this deal, is that this last offer…it’s a two-for-one deal. In addition to suffering the brutality your victims were made to feel at your hands, you’re going to get the memories and the devastation of those closest to both Charlene MacAfee and Holly White.”
He visibly blanches at the mention of those two names.
Finally, he’s on board.
“Cameron killed herself because of the pain she felt from others. What I’m going to do is force feed you worlds of grief, so much so that it haunts every waking minute of the rest of your useless, shitty, downtrodden life.”
“How do you…know those…names?”
“I see you, Tad. What you do and what you’re capable of. Whether or not you did it on purpose, you killed those girls. You cut up Charlene and spread her body throughout several dumpsters. And Holly is buried in black bags two miles off March Austen Road in a seven foot hole.”
“You can’t know these things,” he’s saying, his body growing jittery and manic with every damning revelation.
“The silver lining here,” I say, ignoring him, “is that I am not the horror show I once was, so for now, I’m giving you more…altruistic choices.”
“These are hardly respectable options,” he says, eyeing the bag of weapons.
“I have far greater respect for the wet asshole of a cockroach than I do you, you freaking gutter snipe,” I say, letting some of my own darkness bleed out. “That I haven’t ended you already is a testament to my kindness. So don’t push me.”
He blanches at my turn of character. “Fine,” he says. “You want me to kill myself? Just right here, huh? Just do it?”
He’s getting himself worked up. Preparing. Seeing if he can do it.
“The only thing that matters right now,” I tell him, “is that you confess.”
He takes from his desk drawer two more sheets of paper and starts writing. An hour later, when he’s done and rubbing his sore fingers, I read through his confession, then pick up the phone and dial the local police.
“Who is the detective in charge of the murder and the rapes of children?” I ask. Dr. Blalock can’t even look at me at this point.
